Category: Side Dishes

Hot or Cold Garlic Spinach

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Well, it’s hot. I am not a person who enjoys heat. I mean, you can always warm up, but it seems much more difficult to cool down. I suppose it’s because of where I live, all cool and inviting and rainy…and yes, that lack of sun does come with a corresponding vitamin D deficiency, but! I’m not overheated, and that’s a plus.

And, honestly, when the temperature rises outside, do any of us want to make the temperature go up inside? It just seems like a horrible idea that leads to sweat and hardship and dishes. (Okay, everything leads to dishes, but everything is harder when it’s hot!) That’s why I like hot weather recipes that don’t take a lot of time, that absolutely don’t involve the oven, and that I can eat hot or cold. Enter….Hot or Cold Garlic Spinach!

It’s easy, it’s delicious, and it doesn’t take a lot of a) time or b) ingredients. It’s perfect for summer or the unlooked-for heat snap!

You’ll need (serves 2 – 4):

4 cups spinach

4 tsps. olive oil

2 tsps. rice vinegar

1 tsp. mirin (optional)

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 tsp. sesame seeds

1/4 tsp. sesame oil (optional)

Salt

White Pepper

Get out a frying pan with high sides and heat the olive oil on medium-low. Thoroughly wash and shake out your spinach, and then dice the garlic. Add the spinach, garlic, salt and pepper to the pan, and stir to coat the vegetables in oil as they begin to wilt (about 5 – 10 minutes, depending on heat.) When you can smell the garlic and the spinach has turned malleable, add the rice vinegar and the mirin to the pan. Keep stirring until the steam goes away, and then drain any excess water. If you want to eat it hot, then serve immediately and top with the tiniest amount of sesame oil and the sesame seeds. If you want to eat it cold, toss on the sesame oil and seeds, and then stick it in the refrigerator to cool down and have as a salad!

Additional comments:

If you don’t want to cook the spinach in the pan, you can blanch it first in a pot of boiling water for 2 minutes. You’ll have to cook the garlic in the olive oil in the fry pan separately, then add the spinach, salt, and pepper. Then sauce as directed above!

Zucchini and Tomato Side Dish

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Okay, there’s some onion in there too, but I like alliums, sue me! One of the best things about summer is the vegetables, and one of the hardest things about eating vegetables when you’re allergic to certain foods is picking safe ones to eat. I can’t answer that for anyone but myself, really, I’m not a doctor of any sort, but I do know that right now we all have to be as mindful and careful with ourselves as possible.

So look on this meal as a starting point. The vegetables I can eat are inside it: zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, and onions all from sources I can trust. If you have a garden, I suggest getting out your favorite squash and onions, slap on a tomato or two, and get to chopping. If you don’t have safe access to fresh foods, then frozen works just as well. The key here, as with all allergic cooking, is to do your research. Stick with brands you haven’t had a reaction to before, or email their information departments. I have had good luck with organic in my area (though corn-based farming aids can be just as rife in that area!) and this is always a good time to inquire about local CSAs, or places like that.

In any case, this is a quick, light dish meant for a satisfying side to chicken or pork, or as a mixer in your favorite pasta. It feels very summery to me, actually, hot and peppery, but also light and not overwhelming. I like this sometimes just on garlic toast!

You’ll Need (Serves 2 -4):

2 medium zucchini, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

1 – 2 tomatoes, chopped, or a handful of grape tomatoes

1 garlic clove, sliced

1 heavy pinch of thyme

Salt and black pepper

Olive oil

Heat the oven to 350F, and line a baking dish with aluminum foil. Wash and chopped all your ingredients and add them to the baking dish. Give it a stir to make sure the oil is evenly distributed, and that you add just a little more salt than you think you’ll need. These vegetables are watery, so they’ll make their own sauce, but it’s water…it needs a kick! Cook for about 20-30 minutes, or the tomatoes pop, and then serve.

Oh! And if you want a bit more flavor, add some red pepper flakes as well.

Cucumber Tomato Salad

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Sometimes what you need is a quick, bright splash of acid with a decent crunch, a salad to complement something fatty like lamb, or heavy like a red Thai curry. Also, sometimes you realize you have the end of one sad English cucumber and a box of cherry tomatoes you forgot about and it’s time to either fish or cut bait. And lo! A salad is born!

Winter is not my prime season for salads. If you live somewhere without the darkest days of the year (Say…California where it gets down to fifty and people reach for their woolens) you might not have the same urge to eschew all cold foods and sink into soups, stews, and baked sweet potatoes until you’re as fluffy as the mashed potatoes you just ate. I know they’re good for me, but they’re cold, and I’m cold; my core temperature is going to win out every time.

But when the weather starts warming up, my fickle eye turns towards fresh vegetables once more. This can be a bit tricky (when isn’t it when eating with food allergies?) because a lot of fertilizers or sprays that extend the life of fruits and vegetables can be derived from corn or soy. If you have a sensitive allergy, the produce section is always a minefield.

I don’t have a dedicated vegetable garden, so I rely on my local supermarkets. So far, it’s been without any incident. I’m always careful to go for foods that have some dirt on them, a sign that they probably haven’t been washed or sprayed with something to make them more attractive, and if there’s a rind I generally don’t eat it, even if it’s edible. Thus, I can still have apples and citrus fruits.

In regards to tomatoes and cucumbers, I’ve had good luck. I generally get tomatoes on the vine, though in this case we had a punnet of cherry tomatoes, and the cucumber came from Trader Joe’s so I felt a little better about my chances. As always, approach food from new places with caution until you’re sure you won’t be affected.

Back to the food, this salad has good sharp flavors that wake my tongue up from its winter slumber, and the acid from the rice wine vinegar makes a fantastic complement to the more subtle flavor of the cucumber. I like it with rice and curry, but you could also have it alongside a sweet potato and garlic spinach, or Lemon Paprika Chicken and rice stuffing. It punches up a heavy dinner or makes a great addition to a light lunch. I hope you like it!

You’ll Need (serves 2 -4):

1 English cucumber, diced

2-3 medium tomatoes or a good handful of cherry tomatoes, diced or sliced in half

2 – 3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. Rice Wine Vinegar

1 clove garlic, minced, or a good shake of garlic powder

1 green onion, diced (optional)

A good shake of sesame seeds (optional)

Salt and Pepper

Cut up your vegetables, and place them in a bowl or container with a tight lid. Add the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Close the lid on the bowl and give them a good shake so that everything mixes easily. Can be served immediately, or placed in the fridge to marinate. Lasts about a week, but I would recommend taking it out of the fridge a few minutes before serving, to allow the olive oil to become liquid again.

Hasselback Potatoes: When You Want Fries, but Cutting Them Up Seems Hard

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Sometimes I want fried potatoes, but a) can’t because deep frying terrifies me, and b) my lord, does it seem like a lot of work. When in doubt, and when I want to look fancy, but also feel a bit accomplished, I make “Hasselback Potatoes” which are a sort of crossover potato dish. They’re fancier than just plain ol’ baked potatoes, and the slices mean I can stuff just…so much more fake butter and salt than I should. And you can put anything you want on it! Make it vegan and plant-based! Make it paleo or vegetarian with all the cheese in the world. Add bacon and get your carnivore on! It’s your potato! So come with me, theoretical reader, as I show you have to make the one potato dish you’ll ever need for when company calls, or you want to treat yourself to a date for one.

Let me just get out here that I have no idea where this dish came from. Wikipedia has an unsourced accreditation to a Swedish chef (insert muppet here) in 1959, but I only remember hearing about it a couple of years ago…possibly on the Food Network. Regardless of however it came into my life, it is a potato dish, and thus, I will never let it go. I confess I hate the texture of baked potatoes, and love the brazen salt glut of a good pile of fries, and Hasselback potatoes hit me in the happy medium. Also, I made ketchup again, and I needed something to drench in it. (Pity me, it’s a disease!)

For people like me, with a corn allergy, root vegetables like potatoes can be dangerous. They soak up a lot of what’s in the ground, and so if the farmer grows them in the field with corn-based fertilizers or sprays them with corn-based chemicals for shipment, you can run into real trouble. When I buy potatoes in the grocery store, I buy loose potatoes–not bagged–and I try to aim for the dirtiest ones I can find.

I know it sounds weird, but it’s true! The more dirt is on a vegetable, the less likely you are to run into some kind of chemical you might be allergic to, like the sprout inhibitor some potatoes are sprayed with. Always be careful!

You’ll Need (Serves 1):

1 medium sized potato (I like russets or yukon golds)

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375F, and line a casserole pan with aluminum foil. Then wash and peel your potato, removing any dark spots or hardened eyes you uncover.

To make Hasselback potatoes, take a sharp, heavy knife, and carefully cut slices width-wise down the length of your potato. You want to make each slice approximately as big as teh other for each cooking, and you want to take the knife down almost but not quite cutting through the potato. Be very careful with your knife! I speak as one who has sawed through their thumbnail and lived to regret it.

Decrease the oven to 350F. Put the potato in the casserole dish and cover in oil, salt, and pepper. Cook until a fork can be pushed into the side of the potato easily and come out cleanly (about 45 minutes to an hour). Then add whatever toppings you want! I like salt, pepper, a lot of Miyoko’s fake butter, and a dollop of Forager’s unsweetened plain yogurt.

Roasted Sweet Potato Bites

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I love sweet potatoes, let’s just begin there. They’re sweet without being cloying, they’re delicious, and you can make them with a minimum of fuss which I deeply appreciate in a root vegetable. You scrub ‘em up, oil ‘em down, stab them a few times, then stick them in the oven until they pop out steamy and fluffy and delicious. Sweet potatoes: They’re great!

But sometimes I want to be fancy, like on Thanksgiving, and when I want to push the boat out a little I go to this recipe for diced, roasted sweet potatoes. They take a little work, but they come out sweet and tangy, and so entirely worth it.

Just remember, if you don’t have a food processor, it’s perfectly fine to cut the sweet potatoes into larger chucks. I find the safest method for me is to turn the potato over by a half or a quarter turn (depending on size) each time I make a cut while holding my knife firmly at an angle.

You’ll Need (serves 2 – 4):

2 – 4 sweet potatoes, cleaned, skinned and diced

1 – 2 tsp. ground ginger

1 – 2 tsp garlic

2 – 3 tsp. sugar

2 tsps. Rice vinegar

1/2 – 1/3 cup of oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 375F

Clean your sweet potatoes with cold water, and then skin and dice them. Use either a food processor or a good sharp knife. Take a large bowl and put the ginger, garlic, sugar, rice vinegar, and oil, salt, and pepper into a large bowl.  Toss the sweet potatoes in the mixture and then pour it out onto either a large baking dish or a roasting sheet lined with aluminum foil.

Put the sweet potatoes in the oven, and decrease the temperature to 350F. Keep an eye on them in case the sugar starts to burn. They should cook, depending on size and amount, from forty minutes to an hour, but make sure to try and turn the potatoes at least once. Once they’re cooked through (you should be able to stick a fork easily in the largest piece) take them out, and spoon them into your serving dish.

Rice Stuffing For the Rest of Us: Gluten-free and Allergy-Friendly

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In my family, the side dish you’re always going to see is rice. I can eat it, my mother can eat it, my little brother can eat more of it, but he is only smaller than me in years so that makes sense (seriously, it’s so difficult to be so much older and yet so much shorter!) Even when I could eat practically nothing without reacting to it, I could eat jasmine rice.

But on Thanksgiving—at least in my family—there was never a grain of rice to be seen. It just wasn’t a part of my grandmother’s traditional menu, and changing that line up required an Act of Congress and a two-thirds majority of Aunts. When I was younger, it wasn’t so much of a problem, but now that my food allergies outlaw so many commercial brands and ingredients, putting together a meal that both tastes good and reminds me of my childhood Thanksgivings takes a little bit more ingenuity. Enter Rice Stuffing!

I knew two things I wanted when I set about putting this recipe together: I wanted it to taste like regular stuffing and I wanted the whole dish not to take forever and a day to cook. I think I’ve succeeded on both fronts with this recipe, which creates mound after mound of flavorful rice stuffing dotted with vegetables and herbs. It’s easily adaptable to whatever stuffing recipe you hold dear to your heart as well, and it’s absolutely no muss, no fuss.

You’ll Need (makes 6 servings):

2 cups cooked white jasmine rice

2 carrots, diced small

2 celery stalks, diced small

1 medium-sized onion, diced small

2 – 3 Tbsps. Olive oil

2 cloves roasted garlic, either smushed or chopped

2 tsps. salt

2 tsps. black pepper

1 tsp. red pepper flakes

2 tsps. thyme

2 tsps. sage

1 tsp. rosemary

2 tsps. parsley

1/2 – 2/3 cup broth (use mushroom broth to make it vegan!)

Optional:

1 cup crumbled sausage meat for a heartier dish (cooked with the vegetables)

1 cup button mushrooms, chopped (cooked with the vegetables)

Make the rice ahead of time. When you put the rice into the mix, it should be room temperature, but not cold. You’re also going to need a metal spatula to scrape the bottom of your pan.

Put your oil into a deep frying pan and heat the pan to medium. Dice up your vegetables and add them to the pan, making sure to also add in all the herbs and spices, except for your garlic.  Let that cook down, stirring occasionally, the vegetables soften and the onions become translucent. Add in your garlic and stir until you can smell it.

Push all your vegetables to the sides of the pan, and make a well. Add in your cooked rice, and break up any clumps with your spatula. You want the rice to warm through, so carefully stir it in with the vegetables. When the rice mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the frying pan, creating a sort of brown skin, slowly begin pouring in your broth. You want to add enough liquid that the rice plumps up a bit and comes away from the bottom of the pan, but not enough to drown the rice and make it a solid mushy mess.  Keep turning the stuffing in the pan until every grain of rice shines with the ‘sauce’ you’ve created and the food has begun to stick again. Then, transfer to a serving dish, and it’s ready to go!